Well, my dears, the sun did not come out today, but I took photos anyway because I just couldn't make you wait any longer!
(For the record, yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, but because my office only gets morning sunshine, by the time I got around to it, it was still too dark! Frustrating!)Let's start this off with a little interior designer insight. Sometimes, you get to create a space starting from scratch, which is always awesome. Other times - you gotta work with what your mama gave you. In this case - literally. I mentioned before that my 'office' is a spare bedroom in my parent's house. The furniture was already in there
(and they were not going to be putting any of it in storage on my account thank you very much). The paint color is a bit dark - perfectly warm for a bedroom, but not so much for an office. The carpet is old. The windows still need curtains. The list goes on.
SO, what's a designer to do? Work with it.
Ta da! Not what you expected is it? The desk, files, and bookshelf
(not pictured) were already in here. As was the little sofa. The only larger pieces in here that are mine are the rug
(Cost Plus), the chair
(vintage), and the lamp
(Target base, Anthropologie shade). The rest of if it is lots of little details that I've brought in.
Let's start with the inspiration, shall we?
The postcard on the left is where I wanted to go with my color palette - blues and peachy corals
(mostly with accessories) mixed with sandy khaki, grey and dark brown.
I certainly got my pops of blue in there with the bowl on the left
(from Anthropologie) to hold ribbons, tags, and other miscellany, and the notepad on the right which arrived as a gift last week
just in time to make the deskcape complete! As you can see, I've got my lucite
(file holder from the container store) and my metallics
(vintage pen holder).
My little brass birdie is via ebay, my favorite
Maura Peters candle in Vanilla Grapefruit
(so delicious), and the vintage tray I found thrifting
(it barely has its gold edging left, but you can kinda see it in the photo).
The other little birdie sits next to my plant on the windowsill. Next to the desk, I covered the file folder with a zebra fabric, and topped it with a small basket to hold my mail, a clear vase to hold my paint book, and a candle holder for my pencils. Talk about repurposing!
Next to the file drawers is this bookshelf
(which will be repainted as soon as humanly possible). It stashes my stacks of magazines, some goodies from my Etsy store
(which will be replenished very soon!) and my little 'bar' - for coffee of course.
And then there's the inspiration board - still in a state of flux at them moment a I add new ideas for spring to old ideas I can't get rid of. I usually put up my favorite fashion and rooms to see where my color trends are going - right now I'm really loving olive green with peach and pink tones.
In my dreams, I'd replace the schoolhouse desk with a larger farm table style, replace the metal file drawer with something more attractive, paint the bookshelf in a creamy white, and add some window treatments in the coral/peach tone to add some life and pop to the space! But, hopefully this makeshift bedroom won't be my office for long - ideally I'd love to have my own space to run my
small business out of, and when that day comes... all sorts of dreams will be coming true!
Hope you all enjoyed my little space! I'll have more photos up on flickr later today so you can see all the details and more views of the office too.